STEM Tuesday

STEM Tuesday– Cryptography (Math)/Spy Science– In the Classroom
December 10, 2024 by STEM Tuesday

In my former career, I worked with communications and communication security (which included cryptography). It is a topic that will always be near and dear to my heart. This month, I read the following books: How to Be an International Spy by Andy Briggs This book covers lots of different topics associated with being a spy. The science around it all ranges from psychology to quantum physics. It includes lots of practice activities to help you fully engage in the topic. Top Secret Science: Projects You’re Not Supposed to Know About by Jennifer Swanson If you’re looking more for the history of secret projects, this is the book for you. It looks at a variety of programs that were run in secret. Can You Crack the Code? by Ella Schwartz and Lily Williams If your goal is to learn how to create and crack secret codes, you might want to check out this book. It does a great job...
Read more →

STEM Tuesday– Spy Science and Cryptography– Book List
December 3, 2024 by STEM Tuesday

From ancient ciphers to modern-day digital encryption techniques, this month’s book list explores the science, technology, engineering, and math that make code-making (and code-breaking) possible. The Enigma Girls written by Candace Fleming It all began with a letter in an unmarked envelope received by ten teenage girls. It was World War II, and the British were desperate to break the German Enigma code. Instead of turning to cryptographers, these women were responsible for Bletchley Park, a well-kept secret operating under the code name Station X. Award winning author Candace Fleming spins an engaging narrative based on true facts. Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis’ Secret Code by Rebecca Barone Rebecca Barone jumps across the European continent to trace the history of the Enigma machine, an encryption device invented by the Germans and thought to be unbreakable. Barone highlights the international collaboration among Polish,...
Read more →

STEM Tuesday — Human Body– Author Interview
November 26, 2024 by STEM Tuesday

I’m delighted to welcome Rachel Poliquin to the STEM Tuesday blog today. She has written a fabulous book about the body, but there’s a really cool twist. You’ll see… “Kids and adult alike will love poring over the different sections of this book and will delight in informing their friends and family members of the facts they’ve learned.”—School Library Journal ★ A perfect book for engaging kids in STEM: This illustrated tour of our “leftover” body parts (like the appendix, or even goosebumps) introduces readers age 7-11 to the bizarre and fascinating science of evolution. Welcome to the weirdest museum you’ll ever explore—the one inside your body. Did you know your amazing, incredible body is a walking, talking museum of evolution? In The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers, tour guides Wisdom Tooth and Disappearing Kidney lead readers through a wacky museum dedicated to vestigial structures: body parts that were essential to our ancestors...
Read more →

STEM Tuesday — Human Body– Writing Tips & Resources
November 19, 2024 by STEM Tuesday

I am in constant awe of the human body. The sheer magnificence of what our bodies do every second of every minute of every day is remarkable. Recently, neuroscientists at Princeton released a complete neural map of the fruit fly’s miniscule brain. This connectome showed all the connections and cell types in the brain giving insight into processing that can help understand the nuts and bolts of a neurological system. Since the fruit fly brain resembles the basic functionality of a human brain, but on a larger magnitude and complexity, knowing how the system works fundamentally will lead to discoveries toward treating human neurological diseases. (Side Note: The one fact that caught my attention in the Princeton research was their measurement of the total length of neuron wiring in the fruit fly brain. Although the size of a grain of sand, the fruit fly brain contains about 300 feet of...
Read more →

Contributors

No results.